Investing Team

Amy Banse

Amy has over 25 years of experience investing in, acquiring and building companies at Comcast. Leading Comcast Ventures, she sets strategies, invests in companies like Nextdoor, TuneIn and Houzz, and determines how to support our portfolio through the Comcast NBCUniversal platform. In 2004, Amy launched Comcast Interactive Media, leading development of Comcast’s early digital strategy, including their first video streaming platform and the acquisition and operation of digital properties like Fandango. She started at Comcast as a lawyer overseeing the creation, acquisition and development of Comcast's early cable network portfolio, including E! and The Golf Channel. Amy serves on the boards of Adobe, Clorox, TuneIn, Quantifind and the non-profit Tipping Point Community. She received her B.A. from Harvard, her J.D. from Temple and life knowledge from balancing four kids and a full career.

Gil Beyda

Gil is a serial founder and technologist whose first company developed games for Apple. He leads multi-stage technology investments at Comcast Ventures and also leads Genacast Ventures, an East Coast seed fund formed in partnership with Comcast Ventures. Before that, he was CTO of TACODA, the first behavioral targeting ad network that was acquired by AOL. He also helped pioneer Internet advertising by founding Real Media, the first online ad network and ad server company. In the early eighties, he launched his first company, Mind Games, for the original Apple II. He received his B.S. in computer science and MBA from California State University-Northridge.

Andrew Cleland

Andrew brings an analytical mindset and deep vertical expertise to his companies, focusing on customer care, marketing tech, artificial intelligence, and the future of work. He sits on the boards of Data+Math, Enigma, FanDuel, Heleo, Lytics, SundaySky and Windsor Circle, and led CV’s investment in Interactions. He came to Comcast Ventures from Time Warner Investments, where he focused on early-stage media and technology companies. Running nightclubs while in college, Andrew started his formal career in Booz Allen & Hamilton’s media practice, and was then COO of a music start-up in London called TrustTheDJ. He has a master’s degree in economics with highest distinction from Edinburgh University and received his MBA from INSEAD in France.

Sam Landman

For the last 15 years, Sam’s focus has been on the evolving media landscape. At Comcast Ventures, he’s led investments in media businesses like Fullscreen, Cheddar and Tastemade, in social businesses like Nextdoor and Houseparty, and in commerce businesses like Zola, KeyMe, and Madison Reed. He also co-founded Comcast Accelerate. Before CV, Sam focused on seed-stage investments at Genacast Ventures and led BD efforts at The Electric Sheep Company, an Emmy award-winning creator of virtual worlds and social games, where he led partnerships with NBC, CBS, Warner Brothers and the NBA. Sam started his investment career at Invemed Catalyst Fund. He graduated from Bucknell University and received his MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.

Dinesh Moorjani

Dinesh is a serial entrepreneur & CEO, turned investor. He was the founder and CEO of Hatch Labs, where he built numerous mobile enterprise software and consumer tech companies from ground up. Dinesh cofounded Tinder in 2012. He is an LP and advisor at Warburg Pincus, where he previously served as an Exec-in-Residence. Dinesh held leadership roles at IAC/InterActiveCorp and Samsung Electronics in the US and Asia. He cofounded Saffronart, a global fine art marketplace and auction house, where he serves on the board. Dinesh spent his early career at AD Little and Goldman Sachs, and was an early employee at Mainspring (IPO in July 2000, acquired by IBM in 2001). He is an independent board director at Alight, and serves on the advisory boards of American Express and Assurant. Dinesh serves on the faculty at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and guest lectures at Harvard and Columbia. Dinesh earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern and his MBA from Harvard.

Rick Prostko

Rick seeks to understand the evolving consumer mindset and always has a pulse on future trends. With investments like Hollar, Instacart and Dollar Shave Club, which exited to Unilever, he spends his time finding consumer, digital media and SaaS companies, and has a particular interest in companies merging the physical and digital worlds. Rick began his career as an investment banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and held investor roles at Summit Partners and VantagePoint Capital Partners. He’s a proud Princeton University alumnus.

David Zilberman

David brings a mix of operational, technical and advisory expertise to his decade of experience at Comcast Ventures, focusing on enterprise software, cybersecurity and financial services. He started his career at Lehman Brothers in investment banking, then held a senior business development role at Flarion Technologies, where he played a pivotal role in the company’s fundraising activities and eventual acquisition by Qualcomm. David serves on the boards of AtScale, Bay Dynamics, Bento, College Ave, CTI Towers, EdgeConneX, Lendio and Vox Media as well as non-profit education organization, BELL. He graduated with a finance degree from Binghamton University.

Daniel Gulati

Daniel makes early-stage investments in entrepreneurs building marketplaces, e-commerce companies, social networks, mobile apps and media. He also leads our consumer seed practice. Before becoming a VC, Daniel was an entrepreneur. He founded FashionStake, a marketplace for independent fashion acquired by Fab.com, and then led Fab’s fashion business post-acquisition. Before that, he was a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group. Also a frustrated author, his (only) book Passion & Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders was selected to JP Morgan’s 13th Summer Reading List as a top non-fiction work. He holds a BCom (economics) with distinction from the University of New South Wales and an MBA from Harvard.

Kai Bond

Kai Bond is a Principal at Comcast Ventures where he leads investing in Catalyst Fund, a seed stage fund focused on investing underrepresented founders. In addition to his work at Catalyst Fund, Kai leads gaming and esports investments for Comcast Ventures in NYC. Kai is a repeat founder who has launched and successfully exited companies in the gaming and interactive media space over the last decade. Prior to joining Comcast Ventures, Kai was the founder of pixieTV, an interactive SmartTV platform that was acquired by Samsung in 2014. After successfully launching that product globally as Samsung EXTRA, Kai moved in to the role of GM at Samsung NEXT where he led the investment and incubation of new software startup businesses in New York. Kai has held leadership positions in product strategy, business development, and M&A at Microsoft, GLG, and Hatch Labs. Kai is a graduate of Wesleyan University.

Andy Cao

Andy focuses on enterprise software and cybersecurity investments at Comcast Ventures. Andy was previously was a founding member of Sunstone Partners, a spinout of Trident Capital, where he focused on growth equity investments in enterprise software and tech-enabled services businesses. Andy began his investing career at Trident Capital and prior to that worked in investment banking at Citigroup. Andy graduated from the Jerome Fisher Program at the University of Pennsylvania where he received dual degrees from the Wharton School and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Dylan Gale

Dylan has an appreciation for capital intensive businesses, a fitting skill as he focuses on early stage startups with an emphasis on frontier technologies and healthcare. His prior role at Airbus Ventures focused on aerospace technologies and industrial IOT, giving him the edge on new trends, while putting his finance background to work from his time as a technology investment banker at Wells Fargo Securities. Prior to becoming an investor, Dylan developed a deep understanding of fintech and how to build companies in heavily regulated sectors from the strategic roles he held at Motif Investing. He graduated with a B.S. in business administration with a dual concentration in finance and accounting from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.

Chris Hill

Chris’ diverse range of investment and consulting experience in areas like data, entertainment and real estate form his limitless view of the connected tech world. At Comcast Ventures, he focuses on marketplaces, data and real estate fintech. Prior, he worked at Siemer & Associates where he focused on transactions across the digital media, data, software and analytics landscape. He has independently consulted with a variety of startups in the technology and entertainment space. Chris spent his early career working at IMT Capital, a real estate private equity fund, where he held a leadership role. He sits on the Workforce Investment Board for the state of California. He received his B.A. in history from Yale.

Morgan Polotan

Morgan’s role at Genacast Ventures includes evaluating investment opportunities, sourcing new deals, and managing the growth of existing portfolio companies. Prior to joining Genacast, Morgan worked at Bloomberg Beta, the venture firm backed by Bloomberg. He also spent time as a software engineer at Tapad and instructor at Market-Based Management at the Charles Koch Institute. Morgan earned his B.S. from Northeastern University.

Platform and Operations

Kim Armor

Kim has a knack for launching and scaling profitable businesses in new technologies and media. She oversees finance and strategic partnerships for Comcast Ventures, cultivating business development opportunities with Comcast NBCUniversal. Before Comcast Ventures, she was the CFO and SVP of Business Development for VERSUS, where she grew all business metrics, positioning the company for a merger with NBC Sports. She held leadership positions in finance at Disney, ESPN and ABC and worked for KPMG in its audit practice. Kim graduated from Penn State and received her MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business. She serves on the boards of SheKnows, SnagFilms and CTI.

Francesco Balestra

With a foundation in computer science, mechanical design, and product management, Francesco has a knack for distilling complex issues and creating systematic solutions. In his role, he provides business guidance and strategy to companies and investment strategy to the firm backed by his use of data science and analytics. Prior, he worked at Jet.com where he developed his e-commerce operational intelligence and evaluated the potential impact of new technologies on retail. He also worked in product development at Boeing, modeling aircraft designs. While in undergrad, he worked with Army Research Labs to develop an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle. Francesco graduated from the Olin College of Engineering with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and received his MBA from Harvard.

Andrew Kwok

Andrew’s knack for numbers ensures startups are strategically leveraging their partnership with Comcast. As an analyst for Comcast Ventures' Accelerate program, he takes a data-driven and digital approach to these portfolio companies as they break into the television marketplace. Andrew comes to Comcast Ventures by way of the media agency OMD, where he served as a digital investment strategist on the Wells Fargo account. He graduated with an undergraduate degree from University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Sue Kwon

Kristy Leong

Kristy previously handled partnerships at Comcast Ventures, identifying business development opportunities between portfolio companies and Comcast NBCUniversal. She now works in marketing and communications for the fund. Her background in analytics, digital media, and startups stems from her sales experience at General Mills, strategy experience at Digitas Health, and various marketing roles working with companies in telecommunications, media, pharmaceuticals, mobile gaming, and online publishing. She went to the University of Pennsylvania, earning a B.A. in economics and her MBA in operations and entrepreneurship.

Kyle Peters

Kyle’s experience in accounting and finance provides solid groundwork for his role at Comcast Ventures, where he is responsible for reporting and leads the day-to-day finance and operations for the fund. Prior to Comcast Ventures, he began his career in public accounting before joining Comcast’s Corporate Reporting team, where he completed high-level financial statement analysis and consolidated financial reporting. Kyle graduated from Saint Joseph’s University with a B.S. in accounting.

Gabrielle

Gaby is serving as an Operating Partner across all aspects of Talent, working with Comcast Ventures’ portfolio companies.
Prior to Comcast Ventures, Gaby was Chief People Officer at Tesla, leading the Human Resources, Recruiting, Environment Health and Safety, Security and Facilities organizations. Preceding Tesla, Gaby was the Executive Vice President and Chief Talent Officer at Electronic Arts responsible for global Human Resources, Facilities and Corporate Social Responsibility.
Prior to joining EA, Gaby served as Chief Human Resources Officer for Siebel Systems through its sale to Oracle. Prior to that, she served in human resources positions for seven years with Microsoft Corporation and five years with Oracle Corporation. Her portfolio has included a wide range of HR assignments including international work, most notably in Latin America. Gaby is bilingual and received her bachelor's and master's degrees from Stanford University, followed by a Rotary Scholarship assignment in Santiago, Chile.
Gaby is on the Board of Directors of Glu Mobile, Namely, Visier and Keystone Consulting. Prior she served on the Boards of SHRM, TalentSky, as well as Jive Software and Jhana until they were both sold. She advises several companies, including Collective Health, Espresa, and Lucid.

Legal

Chris King

Chris' wide range of legal experience during his career helps our portfolio companies and fund on legal matters relating to new portfolio investments, existing portfolio company activities and legal due diligence. Chris came from the global law firm of DLA Piper LLP, where he advised start-up and emerging growth companies, venture capital funds and private equity funds in venture financings and M&A transactions. He graduated with a B.S. in finance from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Derek Squire

Derek brings over a decade and a half of legal expertise in venture capital to the fund. He oversees all legal activities at Comcast Ventures, including structuring and negotiating new investments and exit transactions and advising Comcast Ventures investment personnel on legal issues relating to their portfolio companies. Derek is well-positioned in corporate venture as he also serves as Vice President and Senior Deputy General Counsel of Comcast Corporation, responsible for acquisitions, investments, joint ventures and other corporate transactions by Comcast, NBCUniversal and their various subsidiaries. Derek graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.